The second round of the referendum on the Egyptian constitution today will not be much different from the first round. The Muslim Brotherhood will find that a majority supports their constitution, which they drafted with their allies after the withdrawal of the representatives of the other half of the Egyptian people after their proposals were rejected. I said the Egyptian constitution but meant that it is a constitution by the Muslim Brotherhood for the Muslim Brotherhood, which they are imposing on the other half of the Egyptians while proclaiming that even if the result was 51 percent for vs. 49 percent against, then this will mean that the democratic practice has been observed and that the loser must abide by the result. This, in a language that the Muslim Brotherhood understands, is twisting the truth. Indeed, the referendum has been boycotted by an overwhelming majority of judges who are supposed to supervise it, and democracy would not deserve its name if it is not inclusive, rather than exclusive. But the Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to impose a one-party system on Egypt and then pretend that it will be a democracy, which reminds me of the word democracy that was included in the name of every communist state in the defunct socialist camp. In other words, there used to be in Egypt the National Democratic Party (NDP), and now, it has been replaced by the Justice and Freedom Party, and both are that Communist Party but go by another name. I can almost say that the referendum is an attempt to distract the Egyptians away from the real issues facing their country. To be sure, President Mohamed Morsi had made promises to be fulfilled in the first one hundred days of his term. But we are now in the second one hundred days, and none of his promises whatsoever were achieved. The Egyptian economy in the gutter, and cannot possibly survive on a loan from the IMF alone. In fact, this loan, given its interests and conditions, may even harm the economy on the long run. In the first decade of this century, Egypt had achieved an enormous economic take-off, although the rewards could not be reaped by all citizens due to corruption. But the new regime combatted corruption and the economy itself. After the visit by Turkish prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Egypt, there was a lot of talk about economic agreements between the two countries, but these agreements existed for years, and I wrote about them in this column after I heard about them directly from Erdogan (who also spoke to me about Syria's role in the economic issue, but Syria is out of the equation now). I also heard about them from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Egyptian intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Omar Suleiman. There was also a program in place to send Egyptian agricultural products daily to Europe, and they have indeed reached Greece and Italy, and were supposed to be exported to France afterwards. Today, there is no Egyptian economy to speak of, but only the talk about it. Economic hardship means increasing lawlessness, and the criminals who escaped from prisons during the Revolution are yet to return there. All that the reader has to do is consult the crime sections in the local newspapers to see how the Egyptian citizen is no longer safe in his life or his livelihood. One Egyptian colleague of mine told me how her new car was stolen, although the whole family was inside. I was shocked, and said that her husband is in the military and must have been carrying a gun. She said that he was carrying a gun, but that four thugs surrounded the car carrying light machine guns, two in front and two behind where three children sat, two boys and a girl. There used to be crime under the previous regime, but it was certainly not of this magnitude, and I am waiting to hear how someone from the Muslim Brotherhood will justify the failure to safeguard security by invoking democracy. Egypt is my country, before it is the country of three-quarters of the Egyptians, by virtue of age, and I visit it regularly. The collapse of the economy and security does not affect me personally, but I see it all around me. My problem in Egypt is the traffic jams, which have also worsened, although President Morsi had made addressing this issue one of his goals for the first one hundred days in office. In every country in the world there are known hours where traffic jams occur called the rush hours, usually in the morning when people go to work, and at the end of the day when they are going back home. In Egypt, rush hours are 24 hours a day, and the result is increased air pollution with the Egyptians sitting in a car rather than working in a factory or an office. Half a century ago or so, there was Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Faisal, and the Arab left and right followed them, and no one dared to defy them. A few years ago only there was an unwritten pact between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, which was able in major crises to impose an Arab consensus. Today Syria has become an arena for daily killing, Egypt has turned into Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia is alone by itself, and there can be no one-country alliance. We were waiting for leadership, prudence and guidance to come from Egypt, but now we are the ones trying to help it instead. God help us. [email protected]
